12 April 2013

AFC Futsal Club : Pasargad FC 2-10 Chonburi

Shah Alam: Chonburi Bluewave joined Shenzhen Nanling in the semi-final from Group A of the AFC Futsal Club Championship 2013 Zone 2 Qualifiers after recording a convincing 10-2 win over Pasargad FC of the Philippines.

The Thai outfit will take on fellow tournament favourites Shenzhen Nanling on Saturday to decide the group winner while after suffering two defeats in first two matches, Pasargad joined Tainan City of Chinese Taipei to bow out of the competition. They face Tainan in an academic contest on Saturday.

Chonburi controlled the entire match against the Filipino debutants imposing relentless pressures which saw their players hitting the frame of the goal as many as three times in the first 10 minutes of the match before Tanakorn Santanaprasit broke the ice in the 10th minute.

Santanaprasit’s goal opened the floodgates of goals for the Thai side and they never looked back and went on scoring nine more goals. Pasargad’s Iranian import Davood Abbasi notched a brace as consolation in the later period of the match.

Despite winning the match quite comfortably, Chonburi Bluewave coach Pazos Mendez stressed on the need of being clinical in front of the goal.

“Yes it was an important win and with the win our place in the semi-final has been secured but there are so many areas where we need to improve specially our finishing in the beginning were appalling,” he told www.the-afc.com.

We need to be more accurate in the knockout stages because at this level there is no huge gulf amongst the team and if you fail to convert your chances, you may need to pay for it,” he warned.

“I don’t have any preference over our semi-final opponent but our target is to win all the matches so we will try our best against Shenzhen on Saturday,” he added.

Mendez’s counterpart Esmail Sedigh blamed lethargy behind the dismal showing. “We have a very young and inexperienced team and the standard of this tournament is quite high,” he said.

“Although they are from Asia, lot of Chonburi players are world class players whereas I had little luxury of top players and had little options for frequent rotation meaning my players were quite tired in the second half where we made at least five identical mistakes while giving away the goals,” he added.